Martin Bowler – Autumn

Autumn mornings... what's not to like?

Cool calm nights where the frost is close at hand aren’t far way now and under moonlight the water rocks as another carp leaps into fresh air. Daybreak sees no let up in their activity as streams of frothy white bubbles show where the snouts of truffling mirrors and commons are pushing through the silt. Here and where the weed beds have collapsed supply of a rich natural larder to complement what the angler throws at them, which is just as well given an overwhelming urge to feed.

Bang on the bait!

The description above is what we have come to expect and hope from our autumn carp fishing but is this the reality of the situation? It used to be, of that I’m certain matching the orgy of spring and I say this certain I’m looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. Now however I’m not so sure with the carp under constant pressure and fed copious amounts of high quality food all year round. The switch between summer and winter carp fishing is much more gradual without a huge spike in captures come late September, October and November. Never the less there is some benefit to autumn especially if you can find a venue with any of the following attributes:

- A lack of pressure
- A lack of bait introduced during the summer
- A traditional close season meaning the spring feeding frenzy wasn’t supplemented by angler’s boilies.

Best of all though is to find all three and you’re back to the golden days of autumns past.

The anticipation we all know so well...

The journey was long but relatively easy given my nocturnal movements to avoid motorway traffic. Even with a pit stop at McDonalds for a McMuffin and black coffee saw me still pushing the creaking gate open before the sun kissed the lake. There was only one angler fishing but he was in the swim I would have favoured although I wasn’t too fussed as there were other options. Typically I chose the one furthest from the car park and soon got to work pushing the barrow. During this journey I kept a lookout for a sign to shorten it but alas no carp was willing to stop me losing a little more sweat.

A few aspects of the approach...

The end swim I had selected afforded me the ability to cast across to a non-fishing bank and before I did anything else I went to see if the carp were cruising down this margin. With a gentle breeze pushing against the shelf it wasn’t a surprise to see 2 good fish almost immediately drift by with one covered in a chalky residue obviously from recently having rubbed its flank across the bottom. It was a good sign so I decided to bait the nearest point to me with a couple of kilos of 16mm Sticky krill boilies. If I could draw them here the fishing would be so much easier. Alas despite my confidence it wasn’t replicated by the carp which refused to move down the margin behaving as if there was an electric fence in place. Suspicion, of course, was the real reason knowing exactly how to make it difficult for an angler. So I needed to bait where the carp wanted to be but before that I needed to prepare the tackle and importantly get the distance required precisely marked up.

So not to string too many line through the swim I would only be using one rod, which is very normal for me. A 12ft 3¼lb test curve Sniper was twinned with an ESP big pit reel. The line was 12lb Syncro XT to a lead clip and a 3oz weight. To assist with preventing tangles a tapered boom started the hooklength followed by 20lb brown semi stiff Tungsten Loaded. A very simple hair arrangement was formed around a size 5 Cryogen Gripper before a dense krill boilie was threaded on. Initially though I wouldn’t be casting this out until I knew exactly how far it needed to go and to assess this I used another rod without a rig but exactly the same line and lead weight that would be vital to mimic the stretch found in mono. At the range I needed to fish knowing exactly how close I was to the bank was difficult so with the water being clear I tied on a 4ft hooklength and white pop up to act as an underwater marker, which was duly cast out. Slowly with repeated attempts I edged closer until I was certain I had clipped the far bank margin and no longer received a drop, then leaving the line in the clip I put the rod on the ground and walked round to investigate. With little effort I found it sitting perfectly in 5 feet of water and now knew I had my distance, provided it landed just to the left of a tree that I was using as a direction marker. Back in the swim /I reeled in and then used distance sticks to get the number of wraps, 24 in total which I transferred onto the rod with the rig on it before creating a stop knot out of marker gum so I knew where to clip up on every cast there after. All prepared I could now introduce some more bait.

Found em'!

Another kilo of boilies was sprinkled down the shelf and despite my disturbance the difference was amazing. Out of the depths carp appeared immediately tearing up the bottom in a frantic bid to get every mouthful of krill. Such was their feeding intensity even the coots were kept at bay! Understandably I was keen to get a rig in place and literally ran back to the swim. It took 4 attempts to make a cast I was happy with, veering too far left in flight each time before the lead flew straight and true. Had I disturbed the carp? It didn’t seem so as an upper 30 caused my alarm scream as it made its mistake. The beginning of a great session where autumn carp fed like I remembered filling my landing net with big golden bellies and scales the colour of the sun.

Martins upper thirty prize